"Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich . . . I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard . . . A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!" – William F. Buckley, Jr.

BEFORE GETTING INTO THE ACTUAL COLUMN, ONCE A YEAR I SHOULD PROBABLY ADDRESS MY CRITICS.

1) A couple of lefties laughed at my profession, in the mistaken assumption that a career choice defines one's I.Q. The first 20 years of my life, literally, I was farming and then I climbed trees and worked with other growing things (horticulture). I was recently reading a local family's history and the patriarch of the family was an immigrant from Russia in the 1800s. He worked as a sailor on the Great Lakes until he was able to buy a farm in the Upper Michigan wilderness. Some years later a cattle buyer stopped by and bought a cow or two. He handed the farmer the paper work and told him to put his "X" at the bottom. The farmer said, "I can read and write in 5 languages. Can you?"

2) I gave someone a sample of my columns, "In George Orwell's mind, Big Brother was whom?" He said later that he was a little disappointed because I quoted Orwell so much. Well, the trick isn't just looking up quotations but setting them in a certain order (not complaining, just explaining). One of the main reasons I've been writing full time for almost 10 years is that I want to revive interest in the writings of our cultural forebears (WASPs and Dweebs – dead white English boys).

3) I criticize myself for being too wordy sometimes. I'm also torn between wanting to put some things down, just for the record, and trying to avoid wasting your time with things you already know. If I'm guilty of the latter, it's because I know how easy it is to miss important events – even when one is trying hard to keep up with the onslaught against our freedoms (this Administration is like the man who cut off his dog's tail one inch at a time on the theory that it wouldn't hurt so much). Creepy creeping socialism is just as agonizing as the 1917 Bolshevik variety.

WELL, in the interest of point 2 above, I just want to conclude with some pertinent pithy and poignant quotes:

"Christianity is part of the Common Law of England." – Sir Matthew Hale (1736)

"The Law of Probability Dispersal says that whatever hits the fan will not be evenly distributed." – U.P. magazine (Porcupine Press)

"No matter how thin you slice it, it's still boloney." – Al Smith

"The poor ye will always have with you." – Jesus Christ, 30 A.D.

"The fourth threat to the West is closely linked to educational failure: it is thesystematic attack on the traditional family . . .In both our countries, the unconditional supply of social benefits to those who were thought incapable of coping undermined the incentive to work and undercut the family unit . . . the dependency culture weakened society as a whole." – Lady Maggie Thatcher (in Washington, 1997)

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, -

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and behind the dim unknown,

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above His own.

- James Russell Lowell (1845)

"I am alone the Representative of the People. Twice have 24,000,000 . . called me to the throne: which of you durst undertake such a burden? . . What, who areyou?nothing[!] All authority is in the Throne; and what is the Throne? this wooden frame covered with velvet? – no, I AM THE THRONE!" – Napoleon (1813);Magill's Quotations in Context, Frank N. Magill

THE CONTEXT: Napoleon Bonaparte, Emporer of France was from 1799-1815 the central figure of European history. His brilliant career resulted largely from his ability to seize or create opportunities, and his utterly unscrupulous methods to attain dominance. "Power," he said, "is never ridiculous." Few people in history have approached him in genius for action and administration, in fashioning circumstances and directing men for the object he had in mind.

"His first defeat occurred in Russia in 1812. With his downfall near at hand in late 1813, the Allies virtually appealed over his head to the French people. To the Legislative Body, which Napoleon brusquely adjourned for conciliatory tendencies toward the enemy, he delivered a scathing denunciation. The statement L'etat c'est moi(I am the state), commonly attributed to Louis XIV, was apparently first ascribed to [Napoleon] by Dulaure . . (1863).

Curtis Dahlgren

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in southern Wisconsin, and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton... (more)

Curtis Dahlgren is semi-retired in southern Wisconsin, and is the author of "Massey-Harris 101." His career has had some rough similarities to one of his favorite writers, Ferrar Fenton. In the intro to The Fenton Bible, Fenton said:

"I was in '53 a young student in a course of education for an entirely literary career, but with a wider basis of study than is usual. . . . In commerce my life has been passed. . . . Indeed, I hold my commercial experience to have been my most important field of education, divinely prepared to fit me to be a competent translator of the Bible, for it taught me what men are and upon what motives they act, and by what influences they are controlled. Had I, on the other hand, lived the life of a Collegiate Professor, shut up in the narrow walls of a library, I consider that I should have had my knowledge of mankind so confined to glancing through a 'peep-hole' as to make me totally unfit for [my life's work]."

In 1971-72 Curtis did some writing for the Badger Herald and he is listed as a University of Wisconsin-Madison "alumnus" (loosely speaking, along with a few other drop-outs including John Muir, Charles Lindbergh, Frank Lloyd Wright and Dick Cheney). [He writes humor, too.]